The Current State of American Healthcare

While the founders of the United States said the truths of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are self-evident, they didn’t fully secure the ability to prevent others from preying upon these truths. Now, after more than two centuries, we still struggle to fully obtain these truths. As far as I’m concerned, there is no happiness if you can’t be healthy, but in the United States our health is at the mercy of profiteers who find ways to capitalize upon our diseases and injuries. To obtain good health you have to buy insurance and that can easily cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars every month. To keep their workforce healthy, many employers cover those insurance costs and this has seemed reasonable to many, if not most, Americans.

 The problem with employers covering health insurance expenses for their employees has been twofold. The number one problem has been that pharmaceutical companies have not been held in check. Things that are necessary to maintaining good health have been allowed to make astronomical profits off of very inexpensive products—insulin, for example.  These unchecked costs have to be dealt with by insurance companies that in turn pass them on to their customers, making health insurance far too expensive for employers to cover. These costs drive employers to take measures to affordably cover their employees. This might be with high deductibles or minimal prescription coverage. The burden of affording decent health coverage becomes difficult.

 The second problem is that health insurance depends too often on employment. This, of course, proved especially problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic which caused a complete lockdown thus leaving many unemployed and without health insurance. One might as well be left to gamble the Vegas strip for their healthcare in the United States. That hardly makes life seem “self-evident,” let alone being able to pursue happiness.

 And then, during the pandemic, the supreme court overturned the fifty-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling that allowed women to have abortions with restrictions varying from state to state. Now states can ban abortion altogether. Some states, like Idaho where I live, tend to view abortion as wrong in all cases failing to understand how certain cases can endanger the lives of women and their fetuses. Some lawmakers have even suggested that the life of the fetus should be prioritized above that of the mother. And doctors can be prosecuted for performing an abortion by a woman’s rapist’s family if that is how she was impregnated! Here the law clearly interferes with a doctor’s Hippocratic oath. Family doctors now want to stop caring for pregnant women because they can’t risk imprisonment and the well being of their own families. One hospital in Sandpoint, Idaho no longer offers obstetrics because of this. Idaho is far down on the list of doctors per capita, making healthcare scarce as it is. Now our unreasonable abortion laws will make it even more difficult for anyone to get healthcare.

 I fully believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are self-evident, but I’m not sure our government, especially in a state like Idaho, sees it as anything more than a platitude to obtain independence from Great Britain. Perhaps the greatest irony is that in the United Kingdom adequate healthcare is a national priority secured by the National Health Service.

 

Opposition to Educational Savings Accounts/Vouchers in Idaho

Note: This is the sort of writing I have been dedicating myself to during the last month or so. It's a testimony to the state legislature in opposition to a bill for ESA/Vouchers. I was hoping to present it remotely via Zoom, but in the end I had to convert it to letter form since I was in Hawaii at the time testimony was given.

I am Brian Potter from Potlatch. I am a product of Idaho’s fine public-school system as are my children. I also had the good fortune to teach in Idaho’s public-school system for 35 years. Idaho’s public schools are notoriously underfunded and yet they produce some of the best. Many of the complaints about public schools in Idaho, such as poor buildings, bullying, lack of effective courses, etc. would be solved just by fully funding public education so that the buildings are adequate, the personnel is not spread too thin so that bullying is stopped, and people actually see education as a viable profession so that there is not a personnel shortage. People my age from Idaho who attended one of the many rural districts in the state will remember when we all had art, music, P.E., shop, Home Economics, along with the required language arts, sciences, social studies, and business courses. That is no longer the case as the state has gradually pilfered education funding, while establishing high stakes testing to demonstrate accountability. Students of all abilities meet state requirements and demonstrate that with regular testing in the public-school system. Our school districts constantly raise property taxes through levies to meet the unfunded mandates of the state and federal government in order to maintain accountability.

Now in the name of school choice and the euphemism of educational savings accounts it is being proposed that the state continue to purloin money from these public schools so that parents have options. That makes as much sense as me getting a voucher for my taxes toward the highway system since I don’t use I-15 in eastern Idaho. Does that highway not promote the wellbeing of the residents of Idaho through its contribution to our economy? Of course, it does. So, I pay my taxes to continue the wellbeing of this state’s commerce. We should all do the same for our public education system, whether we use it or not. Public education has contributed to the good of this entire nation because we all drive on those highways that engineers from our public schools designed, not to mention the myriad other occupations that benefit all of us. The foundation of our democracy depends upon an educated electorate. Denying the best education to the neediest through tax breaks to those who can already afford private education is not the best way to nourish our democracy.

The idea that districts will be forced to raise property taxes even more to fund their schools and maintain their accountability while no new choices will be provided is ludicrous. The people who homeschool or send their kids to private school will continue to do so while denying choice to those who cannot begin to afford private school tuition or home school their children because they have to work to pay their rent. Meanwhile all those people getting tax breaks for private tuitions or homeschool curriculums will have absolutely no accountability. How will this improve education in Idaho for anyone? The mere suggestion of the idea of ESA/Vouchers is a dereliction of duty to the constitution of the state of Idaho in its lack of accountability, its withholding of monies from desperately underfunded, but constitutionally mandated school districts, and the wellbeing of our democracy. Please vote no on SB1038.